MacBook Pro 15-inch with Retina display will be a nightmare to repair

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Thinking about popping open your $2,000 2013 MacBook Pro with the 15-inch Retina display? Think again. It’s an absolute nightmare to take apart, and any repairs you want to have done are probably better left to experienced hands inside Apple.

As usual, it’s the tinkerers at iFixit that took the screwdrivers and spudgers to Apple’s newest MacBook Pro. This year’s model actually kept a trend going. The 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display scored a horrible 1/10 on iFixit’s scale — just like last year’s model.

It wasn’t always like this. Apple used to build the MacBook Pro so that it was much easier to disassemble. The 2011 MacBook Pro received a whopping 7/10, but it seems clear that Apple won’t be returning to that form any time in the near future.

So what contributed to the 15-inch MacBook Pro’s poor mark? Glued batteries, for one thing. They’ve become a bit of an Apple staple in recent times, so iFixit wasn’t totally surprised when it took half an hour to remove the cells.

The completely fused display is a problem, too. There’s no glass covering Apple’s new Retina panel to keep tiny particulate invaders at bay. If it ever happens to be infiltrated by an errant particle and it starts driving you nuts, you’ll have to have the entire display replaced — and that’s not going to be cheap.

Last but not least, Apple has once again soldered the RAM to the Pro’s mainboard. That doesn’t come as a shock either: it’s fairly hard to find an Apple product that doesn’t have the RAM soldered in place nowadays.

At least Apple’s got some company in the 1/10 repeat offenders club. Microsoft just received their second consecutive 1/10 for the Surface Pro from iFixit. It’s almost as if the computing world’s two most recognizable competitors are trying to see who can build the least repair-friendly machine.